A girl named Trameka Pope is graduating from Wendell Phillips High School in Chicago this week. And that alone is impressive, because she’s had a pretty rough go of it.
First, she and her family were homeless. Then she got pregnant in the eighth grade and kept the baby. So the fact that she stayed in school through all of it is pretty incredible. But she isn’t just graduating…she’s the valedictorian.
Somehow, Trameka managed to get almost straight A’s, while also working at a grocery store, cheerleading, being a member of the National Honor Society and doing a bunch of other extracurricular stuff.
She says she stayed motivated because of her daughter, and didn’t want to be another statistic. She’s planning to get her PhD in social work, and she’s going to Western Illinois University this fall, which was one of 26 different colleges that accepted her.
And it sounds like she won’t have to worry about tuition, because she’s gotten over $600,000 in scholarships.
